Last attempt at saving UD

I am saying maybe when a rune turns from 2x auto to none maybe we went a bit far in the wrong direction

fiery ambush and drain was a staple 2x in any UD bg, I ask anyone who still uses them as such to please identify yourselves

 

Remember Kento was complained about more than culler and the resulting change was unequippable but +1 speed and that was that She is perfectly ok with poeple and is still more than viable in most bgs

 

ok I can get on board with that answer but honestly this whole thread and comments is because of the way UD is moving in the big picture, damage used to be what set us apart from other factions but now our damage is average at best compared to some of the other factions and we dont have sustain / reliable support because of ''faction flavour'' so I just want to make sure we are all aware of the current situation before we move forward in any direction . You know I am going to support ur final decision but I want a serious discussion about where we are and the consequences of the direction we are intending on pursuing

 

the full aspect of the change to culler is that on large maps he will no longer be the reliable ranged unit that can snipe a champion by dragging him out of position and instead become an (and i admit to that) stronger font contestor, but UD has loads of the latter and severe lack of the former and there in comes the problem.

 

I'm going to start by saying what I said in chat. I don't think UD is weak, killed, or gutted. I do think that the faction is unhealthy and more sensitive to changes in the overall meta than any of the other factions (ie. a top SL deck would look and perform generally the same whether ST or FW is the top faction).
I have posted about this before and will post my opinion re: why that is later. For now I am just going to respond to your statements.

Just a general note, I believe that you are a "power" player and are comfortable with there being about a dozen "competitive" decks that are balanced against one another. It's a perfectly valid stance but it's not the only one. This perspective is comfortable with certain runes (for all factions) being well above the curve because the other top decks also contain similar "power" champs/spells.

As I said before, I will save my reasoning for another post but what I believe to be UD's biggest issue is that they are skewed toward early game and develop a significant disadvantage when the board develops to 5+ real champs per side. Minotaurs are the only UD theme where this isn't the case.

1. Korona isn't a top "meta" champ but she's still a pretty good one. Battle leader is still very good (cyclops chief is a top meta SP champ because of it, corgi ranger in KF same). Battle leader provides its benefit in the mid/lategame but that is not a situation that UD wants to be in. She still does see play in bleed decks, which aren't "top" anymore but aren't flaming trash either. I would wait on a change with this one.

2. DV was extremely powerful, especially in the first 10 turns on 2-front maps like nora glades and UD lava. A kill on one side and a gimped champ on the other is extremely hard to recover from. This is another example of that sensitivity I was talking about - the outcome of UD "meta" games is mostly resolved in the first 10-12 turns and it means that they rely on a small amount of high-leverage plays. I would like to see their midgame weaknesses shored up but overpowered early game plays shouldn't get a free pass because that's all the faction has.

3. This one was my fault, and I'm happy for it. Like DV, it is extremely powerful. I think that the most common way of looking at FA and its counterpart, frigid barrier, is as an AoE. In practice, they both end up being single-target kills with massive upside. 45n for ~15 damage is easily sub-par, but that upside is MASSIVE. For FB, it usually means holding a font for one turn (12n + potential for your next deploy to gain 2-3 turns worth of positioning) and it can severely limit your opponent's ability to respond with a kill of their own. For recent/old FA that upside put a massive burden of choice/skill onto the opponent where their next turn is massively compromised and the optimal/natural play means 25+ damage to their champs. I was trying to look for the video earlier, but there was a recorded game between ballballer and theoutcast where outcast walked into baller's font somewhere around turn8 and cast fiery ambush. I don't think he even killed anything that turn, just contest and cast. Baller waited like 30 seconds, calculated a perfect fullhp-> 0hp play, but made a tiny 2hp execution order mistake that left the contesting champ alive. In making that near-perfect play, baller ate ~50 damage and lost the game right there. He wasn't outplayed but the burden of risk/"skill" was so heavily against him as a result of FB that he lost.
I would also caution that just because nobody is playing it yet doesn't mean it's garbage. Whenever a spell gets a nerf, a lot of players just assume it's bad and take it out of their deck until somebody tries it out and finds a place where it fits. Then it's back in like nothing ever happened. I'm not saying this will happen, but the low playerbase/UD main #s means that it's too early to say it would have happened by now.

4. People used to save 3 slots for sacrifice/ret. Now they save 2 slots for sac/ret and the 3rd goes to mandate. Very few spells have that kind of impact.

5. To keep it short, yes, DEP's cooldown is one of the biggest factors hindering UD from competing in medium+ resource games. The problem is that she can also have a high impact in rushy games (where UD is already doing just fine) so it's not an easy revert. Easily UD's highest priority to make them healthy imo.

6. He's fine. It's a nothing change.

7. Imps are in a rough spot, but renewable global AP gen is way too good (oh hey there tailwind). Like goblins, this theme is based around a playstyle that isn't supported well enough either within the theme or UD's general support tools at this moment.

8. It's a bit of a sleeper imo. Could maybe use some small boosts (and I would definitely test the hell out of it before coming to that conclusion) but not trash.

9. I kind of get where you're coming from. UD has always had the advantage of punishing you for not quite killing a champ with sac/ret and perserverence plays into that. SL does perserverence much better because regen and the faction bonus means that the standard aura counter is often ineffective. With screecher, they now have a sac-like mechanism that does UD's thing with more consistency than UD. In a similar vein, it always bugged me that Deep Elf Assassin's flavour text called her "the undisupted queen of the kill" while panty hunter was doing her thing much more effectively for years.

10. Avarice was OP. Manic is possibly the highest impact skill in the game.

 

OK lets talk about drain

In a typical UD match up youll have at most maps 3 - 4 champs before you engage the enemy, now UD being UD cant afford to sit back and get cced therefore we have to initiate

The old drain was great because you cast it engage and your 3 champs will push the battle across all fonts with their buffed stats which was practical in every match especially if pushing ur stats got you one kill on a seperate target where u get a debuffed champ and a dead one so the chances of retaliation are minimal.

Now where the spell went wrong, it debuffed the enemy for too much and too long redering that champion nearly obselete till the champion that engaged him killed him or so.

The global effect was certainly a strength but that wasnt the problem at least in my opinion


Currently:

You have to be in really close proximity to the champion before you can cast it and the effect isnt as long lasting ---> being not practical in most sitations as u wont have 3 champs near one single target at any one stage while playing UD without killing said target and not debuffing it and that means you run the risk of the effect being cleansed off/ losing out on nora and you havent really achieved the full potential of the spell because you only got ur buff on one or 2 champs at most


I can ofc go through every single on of the points i made on my list and as above describe to you my process

 

I think prep is fine on the ranged champs it's on, but I don't think it should have ever been put on melee champs. Consistently breaks them.

Basically be careful of arrowsinger, I love that rune

 

I think the approach to Fiery Ambush was wrong in general. The dmg reduction hurt the Fire Wall theme along with it and we know that that theme wasn't too good to begin with anyway. Sure, it was a really strong spell but I think it'd've been better if it was a slight dmg nerf (say to 10) with a significant cost increase. I for one really enjoyed playing Fire Wall stuff, @Ballballer probably remembers that deck

 

Look, I feel like no one has really addressed this for whatever reason, so let me be the guy.

The problem isn't UD having ways to close gaps, or even that its more melee focused (to an extent).

But if we're going to restrict UD's access to range, we need to make sure that it has viable ways of overcoming that limitation.
--->I love deep elf fanatic. I think it perfectly encapsulates what UD should be. It's got a gap closer (pounce) and can wreck most anything it closes that gap on via high damage and manic.

But DEF is a champ that can be accounted for, as in the other player can plan around it. Oftentimes the most powerful effects in the game are spot effects (which is why avarice was so broken btw). I feel like a general trend has been to give UD really powerful spot effects that further dole out punishment when the gap finally closes and indeed, a meta UD deck will include a variety of them. This can be concerning, but okay, I can sortve see the reasoning behind it---->boosting a strength even more instead of mitigating a weakness

Additionally, I really liked how deep elf priestess used to work (as a chanp that ushers ina world of hurt via relocate). It really made me sad when she was lumped in with the other relocation nerfs (yes sok, even though you reduced the nora cost it was a big nerf). UD needs more synergy that allows champs to play off each other to mitigate their lack of range, or it needs more ways to gap close.

BUT, and this is a big BUT, I would argue that these ways of mitigating weakness need to be built into and between the champs themselves as a general rule. The reason boundless enthusiasm was broken was because it could be applied on any champ and was a spot effect.
---->Suddenly that huge dmg champ is in your face with an instant gap closer that leaves very little in the way of countering. Indeed, the plan became one of mitigating/limiting the inevitable hurt that was coming, unless it was the early game in which case I oftentimes just gave up mid font and played for the late game (because UD lacks the synergy I alluded to earlier that lets it gap close and build for late game).

This is why the minotaur racial is so punishing btw, because it allows them to gap close and not have a "rush or die" mentality. Unfortunately, dimension doors are probably a little too strong in that its an every-turn kind of thing that every champ can utilize and its an actual relic that can be spot placed. But still, yay synergy as a general trend of gap closing.

And this isn't to say that minotaurs and UD in general aren't great in the early game, they are. Rather, minotaurs synergy allows them to carry momentum with them throughout the game.

In a way, boundless enthusiasm and things like it were/are a band-aid for a faction that lacks a way to consistently and reliably utilize the dmg its centered around. This can be overcome by shifting away from spot effects that drastically boost a strength or mitigate a weakness inherent in the faction to a more sprinkled out approach amongst the champions themselves.



Apologies, this was more like a stream-of-consciousness rant than a clear, concise analysis. If anybody has any questions I would be glad to elaborate/clarify.

Also, yes, lonx bone charm is stupid and OP as well.

@davre touched on some of this while I was typing on my phone

 

It got nerfed because I made a deck that dealt 48+2 damage to any non-resistant/immune/eater champ for 0 championap and 25n (+fiery ambush or trail, which also got hit) and literally every other UD deck at the time could do the same thing because they already had all 3 combo pieces.

 

that is prolly the more rational / coherent form of what i was aiming at and you get all the points i was trying to make as for the points you say arent really a problem i also agree but they were there to display unnecessary changes to the faction because we can both agree changes there didnt really make a difference

 

Lol yeah I remember that deck, tho to be fair it was so good because swap was and still is the most OP spell in the game

 

thats the best answer I was waiting for, yes boundless was OP and yes avarice was OP but the importance of what tehy brought to the table is why we should focus on them, and the same applies to minos. We should ask ourselves why are minos the one stable theme in UD over the last 3 - 4 years without a major spike in power?

 

And this is a point I forgot to make earlier.... I DONT feel like UD is being singled out intentionally or there is a conspiracy but rather the simplicity of its tools is what makes it super easy to focus on and highlight and eventually nerf. Frost amp is and i think we can agree Over the top but i couldnt single out a single aspect that makes the theme so damn powerful and i cant suggest a single change that would balance it and thats why its way harder to approach for example than UD.

 

It seems like bleed is the only one of UDs themes that got messed up by a huge amount of game wide consistency changes, which have effected loads of UD abilities and theme abilities... all the others turned out pretty good.

But nobody wants to talk about how deep elves or fire or stitched or goblins or Minos or spiders are, they only want to talk about bleed -- as if it epitomizes all that is wrong with UD, and how it is neglected and victimized and ohhhhh woe isssss me.